As students enter the computer lab today, I welcome them to "National Cherry Turnover Day". As always, Daily Holidays are shared with the students to build a sense of community in the classroom, and give an opportunity for students to settle in as we begin working in the writing lab today.

Students have begun writing their own Creation Myths in class, in order to provide them time to focus and seek clarification on their prompt if needed, as well as to provide me the opportunity to gauge their on-task behavior.

Following peer discussion, students develop and strengthen their narratives as needed by revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach based on their peers' feedback (W.9-10.5).

Students are writing the narrative of the imagined experience of a local geographic or cultural feature's origin, using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences (W.9-10.3). In order to do this, students set out the situation or an observation about the local feature, establishing point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters (W.9-10.3a). Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters, students express the story of how their local feature came to be (W.9-10.3b), using a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole (W.9-10.3c). Students use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the creation (W.9-10.3d), and provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on how the creation is resolved over the course of the narrative (W.9-10.3e).

Resources

With two minutes remaining, I ask for the students' attention; remind them we will be back in this lab again tomorrow and that they should be working on the final copy following the edits they made to their drafts today; and ask them to take the last minute or so to pack up their belongings, log off of the computers, and pick up any garbage or belongings they may have. This focus on cleaning up shares the sense of community and strengthens student ownership in our class and school. As the students begin packing up and moving around, I'm able to move from computer to computer assisting them with saving or emailing papers, or any other technical difficulties they may have.